Core B: Program Development The Duke Center on the Demography of Aging will promote a highly synergistic and interdisciplinary environment to foster important research breakthroughs particulariy in the areas of biological and biomedical demography of aging (aka the biodemography of aging) and in the development and application of innovative mathematical and statistical demographic tools and methods to data. As part of its Program Development Core, the Center will help establish two new faculty positions at Duke, one an assistant professor having a focus on biodemography and the other an assistant professor with expertise in mathematical and statistical demography. These will be tenure-track positions each funded for five years. This Core also supports the Center's Pilot Project program. Three examples of pilot project research are included in the Duke application, with one project focusing on eariy life determinants of later life health in China, and the other two projects researching biomarkers of aging and decision-making in Indonesia and Mexico. Other topics that are central to the Duke Center's research program and for which pilot research projects may be funded include: male-female differences in health and survival, the genetics of aging, new approaches to mortality and morbidity forecasting, mathematical and statistical methods for estimating age when age is not known, and mathematical and statistical analyses of tempo and other distortions of mortality and morbidity rates when health conditions are changing. The work performed in Core B will foster new young faculty and will advance research in the critically important areas of the biodemography of aging and in the mathematical and statistical demography of aging